Murder Passes the Buck

by Deb Baker

EIGHT

  Word For The Day

  INCURSION (in KUR zhuhn) n.

  A sudden, brief invasion or raid.

  BRIGHT AND EARLY TUESDAY morning while we were enjoying our coffee and cinnamon rolls, Blaze pulled into Cora Mae’s driveway in his yellow sheriff’s truck.

  I watched him from the kitchen window as he lumbered to the door and pounded on the frame.

  “My, my,” Cora Mae said when she opened the door and noticed his truck, “what happened to your truck?”

  “Got near a lunatic,” he said, nodding at me.

  “You’ll regret calling me names once I’m dead and gone. You’ll regret a lot of things when I’m gone. But back to business. How are you progressing with the break-in?”

  Blaze was more grim-faced than usual this morning. “That’s what I want to talk to you about.” He sat down at the table with his winter jacket still on and wrapped his big paws around the cup of coffee Cora Mae set in front of him. “Do you want to do this in private?” He glanced over at Cora Mae.

  “I don’t have any secrets from my friends.”

  “What I believe happened, Ma,” he said, taking my hand in his and speaking slowly, “is that you vandalized your own home.”

  “What?” I screamed. “Have you completely lost your mind?”

  Blaze cut in, “I’m trying to understand. I really am. But you have to talk to me. Maybe you don’t want to live alone anymore and it’s your way of reaching out.”

  I wanted to reach out all right and clutch Blaze by his cologne-drenched throat.

  Cora Mae popped up and grabbed the coffee pot. “More coffee?”

  I had my hands on the back of one of the kitchen chairs, squeezing hard. Blaze hadn’t even been looking for the person who destroyed my home. Was he completely dense?

  “Convince me then,” Blaze said. “Give me a good alibi. Little Donny and George were at your house right before the card game. Right?”

  “That’s right. They can vouch for me.” I couldn’t believe I had to defend myself against my own son. Again.

  “But you didn’t come over for the game with them. In fact, we waited so long, at one point we thought you weren’t coming at all.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “What are you implying? That I used the time to vandalize my own house?” When Blaze gave me a steady stare, I slammed my hand down on the table.

  Blaze leaned forward and said, “I want you to pack up and move over with Mary and me until we sort this out. Until your place is cleaned up.”

  “No thanks,” I said through a clenched jaw. “Think I’ll pass. As far as I’m concerned, it’s already sorted out.”

  “I’m not giving you a choice, Ma. I’m going to stay right here until you’re packed and then I’m following you over to the house.” Blaze gave Cora Mae, who was listening intensely, a weak smile.

  “Cora Mae,” I said. “I’m staying right here.”

  “Of course, you are,” she said clearing her throat. “Maybe you two can reach a compromise. I hate to see you fighting. You’re family.

  “You’re better off without one,” I told Cora Mae.

  “I have my date with Onni tonight,” she said, slowly. “And since I’m cooking for him here, and…”

  “Okay, okay,” I said, her message coming through loud and clear. This was the night Cora Mae was going to grill Onni for information. “How about I come over and spend the night,” I said to Blaze, concentrating on slowing my breathing. “But only one night. We can have a nice talk.”

  “It’s a start,” he said, sounding relieved. Was it possible that Blaze believed all the stuff he made up?

  Besides, I reasoned with myself, I can’t give up Mary and Little Donny just because Blaze is acting like a jerk, and I’d have another chance to talk Blaze out of court. If I changed my mind before this evening, I could always stay at my house in spite of the mess.

  “You didn’t tell him about the magazines,” Cora Mae whispered when he went into the living room to make a phone call.

  “It’s like playing poker, Cora Mae. You put one card down at a time.”

  __________

  “Blaze thinks I destroyed my own house for attention,” I said to Kitty when she arrived.

  “And—”

  “And what? I didn’t do it. Do you realize how outrageous that is? Think about it.”

  “Who knew you weren’t home?”

  “My truck was parked right out front because I walked over to Blaze’s, so whoever did it might not have known I wasn’t home.” That thought sent shivers down my spine. “The only people who knew I wasn’t home were the guys at the card table—Blaze, Little Donny, and George.” A thought struck me. “You don’t suppose Blaze had my house vandalized to make me look bad for our court appearance?”

  “No one’s that low,” Kitty said. “Not even Blaze.”

  __________

  Kitty’s yard looked like the town dump. The neighbors had been trying to make her clean it up for years without any luck. They’d even had a meeting at the town hall and sent an official letter ordering her to clean it up. Nothing changed.

  She lived on a side road right off of Highway 35, so everyone going into and out of town got to sightsee past Kitty’s. It was the perfect place for a rummage sale. The beauty of it was someone might haul off some of her garbage along with the actual rummage items.

  “What did you bring?” Kitty said as we unloaded boxes from the back of the truck and added them to the junk heap.

  “This and that,” I said. “Some of the boxes are filled with Barney’s things, books mainly. I didn’t look through them. You can do that.”

  “Gertie, you should keep them if they were Barney’s.”

  “I haven’t needed any of this in the last fourteen months, and I won’t need any of it now.” Barney was an avid reader and would reread the same books. I’m more of a one-time reader. There are so many good books waiting to be read, I’ll never go back and read one twice.

  I spotted a notebook lying in the pile and picked it up. I smiled. It was Barney’s writing notebook. “Think I’ll keep this, though.”

  “See,” Cora Mae said. “We better go through the boxes and make sure you really want to get rid of the things in them.”

  “You do it. I don’t want to.”

  Cora Mae and Kitty lugged the boxes into Kitty’s living room, which was an extension of her junky yard, and sat on the floor and began sorting. I settled into a recliner and paged through Barney’s notebook. Every once in a while, Cora Mae held something up for my examination and each time I said the same thing, “Sell it.”

  Halfway through the notebook entries I turned a page and a loose paper slid to the floor. Kitty picked it up and handed it back.

  I couldn’t believe what I held in my hand. I shot up straight in the recliner.

  In my hand I held the mineral rights to Chester Lampi’s property, and the owner, the name appearing at the bottom of the document, was my deceased husband, Barney. He’d signed it and had it notarized.

  “I think I just figured out why someone vandalized my house,” I said, showing the paper to the rest of my investigative team. “They were looking for this.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us you owned the rights?” Cora Mae said, not quite behind the eight ball yet.

  “I didn’t know until right this minute. Why would Barney have the mineral rights and keep it from me?”

  “Maybe he didn’t think it was important,” Kitty suggested. “Maybe he forgot. And if this was what the burglar was looking for, why didn’t he find it?”

  “Because I had already boxed the notebook up along with the other things for the rummage sale and put them in the shed. The shed wasn’t touched.” I read the fine print one more time. “We checked at the Register of Deeds and according to their records, Onni owns the mineral rights. This is getting messier by the minute.”

  Kitty struggled up from the floor. “If I remember right, the deed we looked at in Escanaba showed Onni’s
ownership going back a good fifty years. The date on this document is from two years ago. Onni must have transferred the rights and Barney never filed the new ownership papers.”

  I thought hard. “If Chester died because of the land and if the mineral rights had anything to do with it, the logical suspect is a family member. Do you think Barb searched my house?”

  “A lot of what-ifs going on here,” Kitty added.

  “If Barb searched your house,” quick-witted Cora Mae said, “she would have taken the magazines.”

  “What magazines?” Kitty demanded. “What’s going on? If I’m going to protect you properly, you have to keep me informed.”

  “You’d think,” I said, ignoring Kitty and waving the document in the air, “this piece of paper is as valuable as gold.”

  __________

  The snow started falling in the early afternoon, not slow and lazy, but thick so it stuck to my eyelashes and wet my face. After a few hours of rummage prepping, I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I ran for the truck at the first opportunity. Kitty gave chase once she figured out what I was up to, but I pulled away before she even got off the front porch.

  I hated deceiving Cora Mae, but I needed a break from Kitty’s overbearing bodyguard strategies, and it was the only way I could think of to do it.

  In the rearview mirror, I saw Kitty stomp her foot and heard the blast from the whistle she wore on a rope around her neck, the same one we had bought in Escanaba. A steady scream from the whistle assaulted my poor ears until I pulled away. I made a mental note never to buy Kitty another present as I turned right at the corner and breathed in the sweet smell of freedom.

  After finding no one home at Blaze’s, I parked in my own drive. Pulling my shotgun from under the seat, I trudged through the gathering snow to my hunting blind.

  I was tired. Up until last Tuesday the most excitement I had to look forward to was the afternoon paper’s crossword puzzle or bingo at the Indian casino. All that’s changed. Chester’s murdered, I’m driving for the first time in my life, and an intruder searched my home. Pretty exciting stuff, but I was tuckered out. And the mineral rights that Barney owned, and that I now owned, had me baffled.

  Who cared about the mineral rights? What good were they? Whoever wanted the document, wanted it bad. Part of me wanted to run right over to Escanaba and file it, another part wanted more time to think. I stuffed the paper into the cushion of the La-Z-boy before I sat down.

  Starting the heater, I kicked back for an afternoon snooze, feeling my problems drifting away.

  The afternoon light was fading when I woke up, and the snow still fell, blowing against the blind. A doe and her half-grown fawn grazed on the apple pile.

  I waded through a foot of snow, wiped off the windshield of my truck with a plastic scraper, and headed to Blaze’s for supper.

  __________

  The mobile home smelled like wet socks. Little Donny was lying on an afghan-covered couch with his feet propped up on the armrest.

  “Get yourself up and change those socks before the fumes kill us all,” I said, swatting him gently on the head. “Move it.”

  Little Donny lumbered down the narrow hall. I looked around. Everything was neat as a pin. Each piece of furniture was covered with squares of wool in every imaginable color, left over from Mary’s afghan craze. She sure was a whiz with crochet needles. Mary spent way too much time on housework and handiwork instead of working on interesting things.

  Blaze looked up from the Tamarack Reporter he was reading. “Saw your truck parked at the house and looked around for you. Figured you were hunting at the blind. See anything?”

  “Not a thing,” I said, remembering my nap.

  Ten minutes later we sat down to fried chicken, canned creamed corn, and mashed potatoes.

  Mary was warm and friendly when she told me I could sleep in the sewing room. “The couch pulls out into a bed,” she said. “It’s already made up. Little Donny can sleep in the living room.”

  “Maybe we can all have a talk about this court thing tomorrow morning. I won’t be around much tonight,” I said, spooning creamed corn onto my potatoes. “I’m working on a case.”

  “No, Ma,” Blaze said in a controlled voice. “I’m working on a case. Remember, I’m the sheriff. That’s my job.”

  “Yes, I know, but I’m assisting.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re going to hunt deer out in your blind a little and take nice naps in the afternoons, and keep out of my business. It’s time to retire.”

  I didn’t say anything, just went on eating. I never listened to Blaze my whole life and wasn’t about to start now.

  I remembered I needed to use my word for the day and rummaged in my pockets for the scrap of paper. It wasn’t there. This word-a-day idea sounded good at the beginning but was quickly becoming a chore. I couldn’t remember yesterday’s word or the day before’s word. I couldn’t even remember today’s word without a cheat-sheet, and now I’d lost it.

  “And just to keep you safe and honest,” Blaze said, interrupting my thoughts. “I’m assigning you your own private bodyguard.”

  I smiled. “I already have a bodyguard.”

  “And who would that be?”

  “Kitty’s taking care of me.”

  “Kitty couldn’t protect a three legged dog. Little Donny’s going to keep an eye on you. Day and night, he’s going to know right where you are. Isn’t that right, Little Donny?”

  “Geez,” Little Donny whined. “Do I have to?”

  Blaze glared at him. Little Donny looked away first. I thought this was a fine arrangement. The thought of Little Donny hanging around was appealing. He would be easy to lose if I wanted him lost, and he might even be helpful. I wish I’d thought of it first. Kitty could share the job with Little Donny, a great excuse when I needed time away from her.

  “Little Donny,” I said, “I think it’s a wonderful idea.”

  Poor Donny laid his head in his hands, defeated.

  After supper clean-up, Blaze and Mary went to visit Grandma Johnson with a plate of chicken, and Little Donny, my new personal bodyguard, fell asleep on the couch.

  Snow was still coming down thick and heavy when I started the truck and pulled out. I waited until I drove out onto the main road before I put on the lights.

  I noticed after the first mile that I’d picked up a tail. By the second mile I figured out who it was. I pulled over, rolled down the window, and motioned the trailing car over to the side of my truck. The car crept up on the left side and stopped, the window sliding down. “Might as well make yourself useful,” I said to Kitty.

  __________

  Kitty wasn’t dressed for outdoor work, which served her right for following me around. I hoped she’d suffer but I hadn’t anticipated the amount of junk that woman carried around in her car. She rummaged in her trunk and came back carrying a pile of clothes.

  “Hop in,” I said. “We’ll pick up your car later.”

  She grinned like she’d been invited to my private party, instead of the truth, which was that she’d crashed it.

  I wore my fishing vest under my hunting jacket and it was fully loaded. I had pepper spray, ammo, hand and foot warmers, and a thermos of Tang. The stun gun was tucked in my purse, and my shotgun lay on the cab floor. I had dressed for subzero weather because this was a surveillance run, and we were going to be outside.

  Kitty fussed and complained as she struggled into long underwear and an old army fatigue jacket.

  “If you want to run surveillance,” I said, watching her attempt to button the jacket, which turned out to belong to her cousin and was several sized too small, “you have to be prepared.”

  After driving past Bill and Barb’s house several times, we parked down the road. I could see light filtering through drawn drapes. With the garage door down, we couldn’t tell if they were home or not. Lights on didn’t mean much. Some people don’t bother turning them off, especially if they’re only going to be gone a short wh
ile.

  “Let’s sneak around back and take a peek inside a window,” I said, dropping down from the truck. The weight of my weapons vest almost bowled me over face first. “Watch that first step, Kitty. It’s a killer.”

  I burst out laughing when I glanced over at her.

  “Shhh,” she hissed. “They’ll hear you.”

  She had on a black facemask to keep her face warm, and she looked like she was ready to rob the Escanaba bank. She was wrapped in so many layers of clothing she could have passed for King Kong. Snow settled on her head as we crouched in the shadows.

  We probably should have talked about a plan, but I had a general idea. If they weren’t home, we would let ourselves in and do a quick search, looking mostly for incriminating evidence like big insurance policies or airline tickets for Tahiti or documents referring to Chester’s land. If they were home, the best we could do was watch for suspicious behavior.

  They were home. We could see them through the kitchen window, sitting at the table with a bottle of beer in front of each of them and a stack of papers between them.

  Settling in the shadow twenty feet from the window, I rummaged in my vest and hauled out a pair of binoculars. I tried to get a better look at the papers on the table, but the binoculars steamed over every time I put them up to my face. When a thin crust of ice formed on the lenses I gave up, put them back in my pocket, and edged closer.

  Fifteen minutes later they still sat there talking.

  “Can you read lips?” I whispered to Kitty.

  She shook her head.

  If they had looked out the window, they wouldn’t have seen us we were so piled with snow. Kitty shook from the cold, her teeth rattling.

  We were on our way back to the truck, rounding the house on the side, when we heard knocking at the front door. Stopping and peering in a dining room window, I saw Bill move through the house. The window gave us a perfect view of the front door when Bill opened it.

  Little Donny stood on the porch.

  “Can I talk to my granny?” we heard Little Donny say. He craned his neck to look around Bill.

  “What makes you think she’s here?” Bill wanted to know.

  Barb walked right by the window we were watching through and stopped behind Bill. I could almost have reached around the corner of the house and tugged on Little Donny’s jacket, we were that close to him.

  “Her truck’s parked on the road out front.” Little Donny turned and pointed off into the dark toward the road. “I’m supposed to be watching her and she gave me the slip. Blaze’ll skin me alive if I don’t find her fast. Isn’t she here?”

  Kitty and I were creeping down the side of the drive trying to stay out of the porch light when Kitty stopped abruptly. I plowed into the back of her, steadied myself, and looked back at the tracks following us away from the corner of the house. It better keep snowing, I thought, or in the morning they’ll see our prints all around the back of the house.

  “I have an idea,” Kitty whispered. “Come on.”

  And she clomped right out onto the driveway and headed for the house calling out, “Hey, everybody, sure are glad you’re home. Hey, Little Donny, what are you doing here?”

  Kitty should have pulled off the black facemask. Not looking as if she was about to rob them blind would have lent credibility to whatever lie she was about to concoct. Little Donny took a step toward the inside of the house, his eyes wide and round like coffee saucers. But he relaxed once he saw me coming up behind.

  “Granny,” he said in relief, “where have you been?” He kept an eye on Kitty, who still hadn’t figured out she better unmask. I decided to step in since the woman with the brilliant idea was keeping it to herself.

  “We’re freezing,” I said to Bill. “If you let us come inside and thaw out, maybe we can talk Kitty into taking off her facemask. Our truck broke down out on the road and we almost froze to death working on it. Little Donny, you run down and check it out. There are battery cables in the back. Maybe you can get it started.”

  “Why didn’t I see you when I passed the truck?” he asked, puzzled. “I stopped and checked inside.”

  Kitty and I looked at each other. “We walked back the other way some,” Kitty said. “You must have passed us in the dark.”

  I handed the truck keys to him and watched him pull out, driving Blaze’s sheriff’s truck.

  Bill swung the door open. “Better come out of the snow.”

  We were in.

  __________

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” I said, watching snow melt in pools on the floor around my feet. I removed my boots, but remembered just in time to keep my hunting jacket on. It wouldn’t be smart to expose my weapon vest. Bill pointed down the hall and I went, trailing clumps of snow that fell from my clothes.

  I searched through the medicine cabinet first, finding the usual things plus a few prescription drugs—Valium and an antibiotic. The cabinet under the sink held the usual—toilet paper and a small trash can. The counter was covered with cosmetics, and an ashtray overflowed with stubs of menthol cigarettes.

  Finishing my search, I opened my vest and extracted the thermos, pouring the Tang down the sink to relieve some of the weight. I had started to feel like I had concrete tied around my waist. I still looked like a beached whale with all my supplies.

  When I came out of the bathroom I found Kitty sitting on a flowered sofa drinking out of a mug. Her jacket and facemask lay in a pile by the door, and she looked comfy as if she was nesting. Bill sat across from her.

  While Kitty told him about the truck breakdown, a pretty believable story, I wandered around the room with my hands behind my back, scanning for clues. I studied family pictures on the top of the television. There was one of Chester when he still had his hair, with his arm around a young Bill. Bill had changed over the years too, but even back then he wore thick glasses.

  “How you doing since your dad died?” I said to Bill, interrupting Kitty’s work of fiction.

  “Dad and I had a falling out in the last few years,” Bill said sadly, shaking his head. “He got ornerier as he aged, and we disagreed on so much. I wish I’d had a chance to make up with him before he died.”

  “I’m sure he knew how you felt, deep down.”

  “I have more pictures. Do you want to see them?”

  “Sure,” I said, watching him take an album from the mantle. Just my luck. Trapped looking at photo albums. I plunked down next to Kitty in all my gear and paged through the album Bill handed to us.

  I started sweating because of the heavy clothes I wore. It was only a matter of time before I passed out from the heat. Pulling off my hunting cap, I shook out my orange mop. I rolled up the legs of my snow pants. That was a trick, leaning down over all the supplies.

  “Where’s Barb?” I asked.

  “She went to bed,” Bill said.

  “I need a drink of water.” I handed the album to Kitty.

  “You stay here,” I said to Bill when he started to rise. “I can get it myself.”

  I opened every cupboard and drawer, again finding only the usual supplies. The pile of papers on the table turned out to be shopping catalogs.

  Noticing the silence in the front room, I ran water in the sink and clinked a glass against the tap.

  I was really on fire now, sweat beading on my forehead.

  Just then Little Donny pounded on the front door and let himself in. When I turned off the water and came out of the kitchen he was blowing on his hands to warm them.

  “Where are your gloves?” I asked. I motioned to Kitty with my head to get going and leaned against the wall to pull on my boots.

  “Forgot them,” Little Donny said. “There wasn’t a thing wrong with your truck. It started right up.”

  “Well, that’s certainly strange,” I said, trying to hustling them out.

  “Look at this one, Gertie.” Kitty held up an aging black and white photograph of three service men, their arms around each other, smiles on
their faces. “Chester and Onni and, why, isn’t that Floyd?”

  Bill looked over Kitty’s shoulder. “The three of them enlisted together in the Marines together. They were close friends their entire lives.”

  I studied the picture, trying to imagine bible-toting Floyd in the military. And even in his youth, Onni had the body of a scarecrow, a receding hairline, and a shifty, shaded light in his eyes like he was always prowling. I penciled him in on my mental suspect list.

  It took a while to get Kitty moving, but finally we were on our way down the driveway, waving to Bill, who stood in the doorway watching us leave.

  “That went well,” I said to Kitty as we headed back to drop her off. “I don’t think they suspect a thing.”